THEORY: Is the Halo ring at the end of Halo 5’s Legendary Ending actually a giant hologram?

There have been several instances in the Halo series where we got a glimpse at some amazing Forerunner installations, only to have them be destroyed before being able to add anything of particular significance to the lore, or to have them not be destroyed but become completely forgotten in future novels or games. Onyx/Trevelyan allowed the UNSC access to a literal treasure trove of ancient Forerunner technology, but we have to yet to really hear anything of it in the Reclaimer Saga era. Installation 03, which we saw in the flesh in Halo 4, had only a few seconds of screen time before we were forced to defend the boring Humans on their boring station who were going to become composed into not-so-boring Promethean Knights anyway. The Absolute Record, whose exact purpose was never truly made clear to anyone, was destroyed or something at the end of Halo: Escalation, and was only tangentially related to the story of Halo 5: Guardians.

Also in the Halo series are many instances of Hologram technology being used. Cortana is a hologram, obviously. The Hologram Armor Ability featured in Halo: Reach and Halo 4 uses Hologram technology, obviously. The Prophets deliver their sermons via Hologram projectors, obviously. And the Forerunners use Holograms for almost everything it makes you wonder if any living Forerunner actually remembers what paper is.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, we over here at HaloSwallower are ready to propose a radical theory that could potentially alter the direction future Halo games might take. Are you ready? Yes?

Remember when you grinded through the campaign of Halo 5 on Legendary for hours, wondering throughout the whole experience, “When is the next Chief mission?” and “What is going on?”, while screaming at your AI companions to revive you every time you died? (if you did it on Co-Op, good for you) You thought it was all worth it when you finally watched the Legendary ending and saw a Halo ring powering up, didn’t you? You just watched the Legendary ending on YouTube instead of actually playing the game on Legendary too, didn’t you?

What if we told you that that Halo ring was nothing but a hologram (basically, nothing) and that we had sufficient evidence to back it up? What would you do? Nothing? Yeah, thought so.

Anyway, firstly, in the Halo 5: A Hero Falls trailer, while news of the Master Chief’s “death” is being broadcasted to the galaxy, we can clearly see a Halo installation in the background of some space station where some repair work or something is going on.

Which begs the question, what is the purpose of that space station? Some might argue that it is an Ivanoff Station 2.0, built for the sole purpose of researching the Halo installation nearby. However, this is clearly impossible because if it really were a UNSC Research Station, it would have been attacked by Covenant and Promethean forces by now. Hence, it is more likely that this structure is a massive hologram projector which was used to project the Halo ring in the bottom right corner of the image, which is definitely the exact same Halo ring as the one seen in Halo 5’s Legendary ending.

Secondly, every Halo installation (that wasn’t a replacement for a destroyed) one we have encountered was orbiting a large planetary body that barely had any solid ground on it. Installations 04 and 05 were both orbiting gas giants (Threshold and Substances respectively), Installation 03 was orbiting a destroyed planet. But wait, what the hell is the Halo in the Legendary ending orbiting? That’s right, a planet with craters or some shit, but still a planet with a lot of solid ground nonetheless.

It is an impossibility for a Halo ring (that isn’t a replacement) to be orbiting a relatively intact planet based solely on the fact that we have yet to see one before. Also, if you look carefully at the above image, you can see that the Halo ring does not cast a Halo-shaped shadow on the planet, instead, half the planet is shrouded in darkness. The only possible explanation for this phenomenon, therefore, is that the Halo ring isn’t actually real and the Hologram Projector structure thing from earlier is actually the one casting the gigantic shadow on the planet.

Now you might say, “But Regret, what if that Halo ring is a replacement for a destroyed one? Just like how Installation 04B replaced 04?” I’m glad you asked, let’s move on.

Thirdly, the one other Halo installation that was near a giant space station turned out to be a phoney. In Halo 3, we encountered Installation 04B, a replacement for Installation 04 (which was destroyed in Halo: Combat Evolved). However, the giant hula hoop turned out to be a phoney when it blew itself and the Ark up when it was activated, and failed to activate the other rings too! Obviously whoever built it decided to cut some corners, resulting in the phoney ring. Similarly, the Halo ring seen in the Legendary ending is also near a space station (the giant Hologram Projector). Therefore, by using our infallible logic skills, it has to be a phoney ring too, and the only way for it to be phoney is if it were a giant hologram!

Now that we have enough evidence to suggest that it is a hologram, we can now CONFIRM that it is in fact a hologram. For this, we enlisted to help of the Halo Swallower Union of Armchair Physicists (HSUAP) to do some calculations and analysis for us.

The emission spectrum of the unidentified Halo ring, obtained by supplying inverse reactive current to unilateral phase detractors connected to the Xbox One by way of capture card, is disproportionate to that of an actual Halo ring’s.

The angular momentum of the unknown Halo ring is inconsistent with that of an actual solid body in space. This was derived by connecting the capture card by a non-reversible trem’e pipe to the differential girdlespring on the up-end of the grammes.

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If you watch the Legendary ending cutscene at 8K resolution with a 1 trillion FPS video camera recording, and observe it very closely, you can see a grand total of 1 frame where the Halo ring suddenly disappears, presumably due to imperfections in the UNSC Hologram Projector space station strucutre thing.

In conclusion, for the Halo ring in the Legendary ending to be real and not a hologram, not only will you invalidate the canon that was so painstakingly built up since Halo: Combat Evolved, but you will also force a rewriting of everything and anything about physics! Yes, it’s that dramatic.

One response to “THEORY: Is the Halo ring at the end of Halo 5’s Legendary Ending actually a giant hologram?”

the ring not casting a shadow is obviousely because the light comes from a direction where it could not cast a shadow on the planet. Also what makes you so sure the ring in that trailer to definitely be the same as the one in the legendary ending? I can’t see any evidence supporting this theory.